Chapter 6: The Tin

Brody walked away whistling.

The other three followed him up the path, and Shay looked back once, and then the crowd closed behind them.

I opened my laptop on the stone wall right there at Sunset Point.

My hands were steady. That surprised me.

The cloud folder that used to say "Frankie, Everything" was gone.

Four years of folders. Gone.

The deleted items were gone too. Emptied two days ago, at 9:14 at night.

The little gray line at the bottom of the activity page said, "Deleted from Brody's iPhone."

Two nights ago at 9:14, Dot was sitting on my motel bed looking at those pictures on this laptop.

The synced copies on the laptop were gone now too.

"My drive," I said. "My external drive. It's at my apartment."

Sawyer was already beside me.

"Who has a key?"

"Jace."

I called my mom.

She'd just got off a night shift and her voice was thick and tired, but she didn't ask a single question.

She drove to Fort Collins in her scrubs.

Forty minutes later she called back from my apartment.

"Honey, the drawer's empty. The plants are watered, though."

"Mom."

"Jace texted me the night before you left. He said he'd locked up for you." She went quiet. "Frankie, what did those boys do?"

I told her I'd call her back.

Then I closed the laptop and sat down on the bench beside Dot, and I broke.

It was not pretty.

Four years. My dad's last birthday. My mom asleep in the break room. Every wedding I'd ever second-shot.

Dot didn't say anything.

She put her hand flat on my back and left it there.

Sawyer stood in front of us with his back to me, facing the path, so no tourist could see my face.

I gave myself one minute.

Then I wiped my face on my flannel and held up my left thumb against the last of the pink sky.

I shot it.

The shutter sounded exactly like it always did.

And I remembered.

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